


Le Morte D’Aziraphale

by Ultramarine316



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Clueless Aziraphale (Good Omens), Consensual kidnapping?, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Jealous Crowley (Good Omens), Knight Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Merlin is just one Slytherin surrounded by Gryffindors trying his best, My knowledge of Arthurian legend is largely based on BBC Merlin and it shows, Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Rescue kink, Scene: Kingdom of Wessex 537 AD (Good Omens), aziraphale has a Rescue Kink, damsel in distress aziraphale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultramarine316/pseuds/Ultramarine316
Summary: During his time with King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Aziraphale winds up in an awkward situation and asks for Crowley’s help extricating himself, but the other Knights don’t respond well to The Black Knight suddenly appearing and carrying off their (Fair Damsel) Sir Aziraphale. Hijinks ensue.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 172





	1. The Flower of Camelot

**Author's Note:**

> This will only be a few chapter. The rating may go up, if the hijinks turn sexy. Additional tags to be added with chapters.

The Kingdom of Wessex, 537 AD

  


The day wasn’t quite as foggy as it had been when they last met, some weeks ago, so both the angel and the demon were able to spot each other immediately. Aziraphale was dressed much as he had been then, but Crowley hadn’t bothered with the full plate armor this time and both had come alone. It would have made sense, then, for Crowley feel like the vulnerable one, but somehow this only caused Aziraphale to feel overdressed and a touch ridiculous as his nemesis sauntered over.

“Well, good afternoon, Sir Aziraphale. I _thought_ you might change your mind.”

“Change my mind?”

“About what we talked about last time. Us just cancelling each other out and all. Be a lot smarter to –”

“Oh, that! Tsk! Certainly not! And you might as well get that out of your head right now!”

“Well, someone’s in a foul mood. You’re the one who asked me to meet, remember?”

“Yes, well, I’m sorry. Perhaps I’m a bit on edge. The fact is, I have a favor to ask of you.”

Crowley only responded with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, I say it’s a favor, but it will benefit you as well.”

“Soooo, you are, let me get this perfectly straight, suggesting that we cooperate? Work together? Almost as if--”

“ _Not_ in the way that you are suggesting! This would be strictly a one-time, isolated incident to address a highly unusual situation which will never occur again!”

“I…see. And what is this once in a life time favor you beseech of me, oh rigidly upright knight?”

“I need you to discorporate me.”

“I—what?!”

“In front of some of the other round table lads. You can challenge me, and I’ll let you win. Think of what it will do for your reputation in Wessex and you can report it as a win to down below too!”

“What in the name of all that is unholy are you talking about?” Crowley snapped.

“Oh, you wouldn’t be in any danger! If you challenge me to single combat, the others will be honor bound not to interfere and to accept your victory.”

“That’s not the bloody problem I’m having here, Angel! I’m not going to kill you!”

“Of course, you aren’t! Discorporation is all I’m talking about. Please Crowley, just this once. I won’t hold it against you; it won’t mean anything. I wouldn’t ask, except that you really are the only one I can trust to do it right.”

Crowley was sure that his ears had stopped working but for some reason rubbed his eyes instead. “Wut…?” He could not formulate a reply. Had he gone insane, he wondered? Could you go insane all at once like this, with no warning? “Why—why do you want me too…”

“Discorporate me.”

“That,” Crowley continued to rub at his eyes, the better to not meet Aziraphale’s gaze. “Why do you want that?”

“It has become imperative that I extricate myself from King Arthur’s court. At once.”

“Then just leave if you want to! Just hop on a horse and leave you silly git! They won’t be able to find you if you don’t want them to.”

“No, I can’t just run out on them! It…it’s not that simple. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why on Earth not?” Crowley demanded.

“Well, because, what will they think of me if I abscond in the middle of the night? Break my vows of loyalty…they’ll think I’m a coward or a traitor and all the hard work I’ve done trying to steer Camelot in the right direction—poof! Out the window! They’ll write off all the traitor’s ideas! But-but- don’t you see, if I die nobly in battle, then I’m off the hook! I can even ask them to carry on my legacy with my dyeing breath.”

“What do you mean by ‘off the hook’? Just what exactly are you on the hook for? And why is it so imperative that you suddenly get away from this assignment which you seemed pretty gung ho about just a couple weeks ago.”

Aziraphale cursed himself. Crowley had zeroed in on exactly the part of his ramblings that the angel wished he hadn’t. “Well, not ‘off the hook’ exactly…I shouldn’t have put it like that, only… Oh Crowley! I’ve made such a mess of things!”

Crowley did not think this conversation could become any more alarming than it already was, but suddenly the angel looked almost ready to cry and Crowley found himself propelled forward to put a hand on his hereditary enemy’s shoulder.

“Whoa, whoa, what happened Angel? We’ll get it sorted out. It can’t be as bad as all that.”

“Oh dear, yes, I suppose I am making an awful fuss,” Aziraphale said, continuing to fuss and fidget and cast pleading looks at Crowley. “I just feel so dreadful about it…oh, what will you think of me?”

Crowley remained silent, fixing Aziraphale with an expectant look instead of offering the kind of sarcastic remark he might have in other circumstances.

“Okay,” Aziraphale took a breath. “The thing is that I do enjoy the company of King Arthur and his knights. They’re all, well, just lovely people. And the sense of comradery and fellowship! Being part of a group, fighting the good fight, and just having a cracking good time doing it!”

“Sounds…chummy.”

“Yes! Just so! But you see, we’re all such good chums, the knights and I, that I failed to notice that one of them has perhaps come to look upon me as, er, as more than a chum.”

“Grk!” Crowley hand involuntarily spasmed on Aziraphale’s shoulder, squeezing the chain mail there and startling Aziraphale into hurrying out with the rest of his story.

“You see, Sir Percival has a certain affinity for holiness. Nearly a prophet, really, very spiritual. He has what humans would call second sight, I suppose, except he’s exclusively tuned in to the divine and I think that what’s happened is that he senses my divine nature and he’s become, well, he’s become a wee bit obsessed with me.”

“What is _a wee bit obsessed_? You can’t be _a wee bi_ t obsessed, Angel. Obsessed is all or nothing. Obsessed is obsessed!”

“Well, fine, then the young man has become _completely_ obsessed with me. But it really isn’t his fault, the poor boy. If anything, it’s mine for not noticing what was happening sooner. I fear that I did…lead him on a bit, though it was never my intention to do so.”

“Now stop that this instant! Angel, would you _ever_ , _under any circumstances_ , counsel a human that they had to accept unwanted advances, from anyone? Would you ever tell a human that they were to blame for receiving unwanted attention?”

“Well, no, of course not, but I should have been able to—"

“And there probably wasn’t anything you could have done to nip this in the bud anyway. If the problem is that he’s drawn to your divine nature, then nothing that you said or did early on would have prevented that, right?”

“I suppose not…”

“Alright, so you will tell this Sir Percival that you are _flattered_ but not interested, end of story.” _And if he doesn’t back off after that, then I will drop a mid-sized castle on him_ , Crowley finished internally.

“It’s already gone too far for that! Percival asked Arthur for his blessing to marry me and Arthur said it would be his honor to perform the ceremony himself and that everyone had been waiting for one of us to say something! They all assumed that he and I were already—already together!”

“Nggh! Well that’s very enlightened of them,” Crowley offered while his brain struggled to process what he was being told. Aziraphale was adorable, of course, but he was adorable in a way that humans were supposed to be too stupid and shallow to appreciate. Humans were supposed to lust after flashy, seductive Crowley and fail to appreciate how wonderful Aziraphale was. Aziraphale was supposed to be just for him.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you Crowley! About Camelot and why what we’re doing here matters! Maybe you’ve just been—' _mucking about in damp places’_ all this time but I have been trying to—”

“I _believe_ that what I said was ‘ _trying very hard_ in damp places’! And I —"

“I have been building something here! We have been building something! A society founded on justice and decency instead of superstition and arbitrary, small minded—these people are trying to raise themselves back out of the dark ages and I believe in them! I can’t let my leaving damage the progress we’ve made. But I also can’t stay and marry Percival. Or stay and look everyone in the eyes if I break poor Percival’s heart. So, will you please just help me out and kill me, just this once? I’ve been over it and over it and there just isn’t any other way.” Aziraphale had worked himself into such a state of helpless anxiety during this speech that Crowley would have agreed to almost anything to calm him down. Almost anything.

“Alright, Angel, I will get you out of this, one way or another, and without tarnishing your reputation, I promise.”

“Oh, thank you Crowley!” Aziraphale beamed. “In two days, some of us will be going to the woods to fast and pray. We’ll be mostly unarmed, just our swords but no armor. That would be a good time to happen upon the group and—I know I can count on you to make quick work of it, old boy.”

_Fuuuuck_ , Crowley thought, _when he smiles like that! Sunlight after the rain_.

There was no way Crowley was going to discorporate the angel though. There had never, even early in their time on Earth together, been a time when Crowley had relished the idea of resorting to violence against his opposite number. For one thing, pointless violence wasn’t Crowley’s scene. For another, it had been pretty clear from the start that having Aziraphale as a nemesis was far preferable to any other angel he might be replaced with if Crowley sent him upstairs. Since then, the idea had moved from merely unpleasant to unthinkable. There was no way he could _hurt_ Aziraphale. He would have to see the look of pain on his face. He would probably see it every time he closed his eyes for the rest of his life!

No, Crowley had a much better idea.

\----

Two days later, Aziraphale, along with most of King Arthur’s knights set out for the sacred spring in the woods. The moment was bittersweet for Aziraphale, who had given out his meager possessions to his fellow knights the day before. He might never see any of his friends again. Still, he couldn’t help but feel relieved to be slipping away from what had suddenly become a very fraught situation. He was also rather peckish. Technically, he had only missed breakfast so far, but he did hope Crowley showed up before he had to endure much more of this fasting business.

As Aziraphale mulled all this over, Crowley watched them arrive at the clearing where the spring flowed, from the cover of some trees on the other side of it. He had had a couple of vassals bring his horse this far, but he would have to ride the thing at least for the first little bit and he wasn’t looking forward to it.

As they entered the clearing, the knights remarked on the snow-white blossoms which covered every branch of every tree. One particularly brawny knight strode forward and snapped a not particularly low hanging branch off one of the trees as if it were a twig.

“White flowers for you, my little white flower,” the knight said, presenting the branch to Aziraphale.

“Oh! Oh my! Er! Thank you, Percival!”

Crowley grunted to himself. Something about the way Aziraphale had talked about Percival, perhaps it was the way he seemed so apologetic about ‘leading him on’, or the description of him as so spiritual and “nearly a prophet” had led Crowley to assume he might be a bit less muscular than the average knight. He had thought maybe the coltish lad with the hollow cheekbones haunting the back of the group, not this massive pile of beef that was towering over Aziraphale.

Well, here goes nothing, Crowley told himself and shimmied into the saddle. Immediately, his massive war horse objected the to presence of a snake on its back, reared up, and charged into the clearing. Crowley was a bit less startled by all this than everyone else in the clearing.

“Oh! Who goes there?” began Aziraphale, ready to claim the honor of fighting the intruder in single combat, but he got no further before Crowley scooped him up into the saddle with him. The horse reared and plunged again and Aziraphale gave a genuine shriek of fear. Crowley clutched him tight and managed to keep hold of the bridle.

“It is I, the Black Knight!” Crowley proclaimed. “Say goodbye to your precious Sir Aziraphale, for you shall never see him again!”

“Unhand him!” Percival screamed and made a grab for the horse, but the poor frightened creature didn’t need any urging to dash away at top speed.

“You aren’t worthy of him!” Crowley threw back. “He’s mine now! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

“Oh, um, carry on without me!” Aziraphale added. “Remember what we talked about, about the public sanitation projects, won’t you Arthur? There’s a good chap!”

“What did he say, Merlin?” Arthur asked the lanky young man Crowley had mistaken for Percival.

“He said ‘save me’!” Percival insisted, nearly beside himself. “We must go after them!”

“It’s alright,” Merlin assured him. “I think I know how to track them.”


	2. The Knight of the Greenwood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter

Most of the Knights of the round table stood dumbfounded as The Black Knight galloped off, laughing his evil laugh, with poor Sir Aziraphale in his clutches, their friends screams of terror trailing away into the forest. (The horse really was completely out of control. Crowley had given up on trying to restrain it in any way and was simply compelling roots and branches to shift out of their way. He was rather delighted with his own audacity but Aziraphale was sure they would run right into a tree at any moment.)

“Wow…” it was Sir Agravaine who broke the silence at last. “Out of all the smoking hot damsels in Camelot, he’s seriously going to ravage Sir Aziraphale? Like, I could see if it was Guinevere…or Lady Elaine, am I riiiight?”

“Dude! That is so not cool for _so_ many reasons!” Sir Gareth smacked him and cut his eyes towards Percival, who was standing _right_ there.

“Yeah, I think Sir Aziraphale is super cute,” Sir Bedivere spoke quietly, also aware that Sir Percival was standing right there.

Agravaine punched Sir Gareth in the shoulder. “Piss off Gareth.”

“Hey, quit picking on Gareth, you dick!” Sir Gawain hit Agravaine.

Sir Gareth, Sir Gawaine, and Sir Agravaine fell into a scuffle and were soon punching each other on the ground.

“I’m just saying what everyone was thinking! Ow! Fuck! Fuck you Gawain!”

“Alright, everyone shut up!” Arthur, who along with three other knights had been busy physically restraining Percival from charging off into the woods and probably getting lost injured in his attempt to run down a horse, put all his god given power of command into calling his knights back into line. God, they always got like this when they skipped breakfast. From now on, no more fasts. “Merlin, you said you—Percival, stop it! -- You said you think you can track them?”

Merlin nodded. “Yeah. There was something…really unusual about the Black Knight. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble following them. Him.”

Because there was something really unusual about Sir Aziraphale too, of course. Merlin had wondered about it from the start. But people in glass houses and all that. Merlin believed in letting people have their secrets, so long as they weren’t secrets that endangered Arthur, and Sir Aziraphale had never seemed interested in doing anything but offering useful ideas for making Camelot a better place. Ensuring that former serfs had equal protection under the law, creating one big library of books that everyone in Camelot had access to, and hollowing out a small loaf of bread and filling it with soup; those had all been his. It was very strange that he and the black knight felt so similar though.

“There, you see!” Arthur cried. “We’ve got ourselves a quest! Let’s all go back to Camelot, suit up, and then we’ll go rescue Sir Aziraphale, alright buddy?”

“Alright,” Percival nodded and was finally released. “But let’s hurry, for God’s sake! My poor flower must be so scared!”

“Quest! Quest!” Sir Gawain shouted, and it was soon taken up as a chant by the rest of the knights. “Quest! Quest! Quest! Quest!”

“Yo, were you talking about Lady Elaine of Garot?” Sir Kay asked Agravaine, as they all headed back the way they came “Cus I’m pretty sure she’s technically, like, my half-sister or something?”

“Nah bro, I meant Lady Elaine the Peerless.”

“Oh yeah bro, Elaine the Peerless can fucking get it.”

Fist bump.

\-----

“Crowley would you please slow down!”

“I have no control over what horses choose to do, Aziraphale! Horses are wild animals!”

“No they…oh for goodness sake…” Aziraphale tried to calm himself down enough to focus on calming the horse down. “There, there, it’s alright,” he soothed, placing a hand on its neck. Be not afraid. Think about…meadows full of hay or some such. Whatever it is you like best.”

It took a moment, but the horse began to slow until exhaustion caught up with it and it came to a gasping, panting, stop. They slid from the saddle, both relieved to be on terra firma again. Aziraphale miracled some lumps of sugar for the poor beast.

“Here you are, one for you, and one for me…There’s a nice…Crowley, what’s your horse’s name?”

Crowley shrugged.

“Nice…Apollonius. You’ll be just fine now, won’t you? Good lad.”

Crowley waited patiently as Aziraphale finished soothing the horse, a grin plastered on his face. Aziraphale had not seen that one coming, alright. Crowley had really outdone himself this time. Gone above and beyond what was asked of him, whisking Aziraphale away from that boring meathead Sir Percival and in a way that spared the angel from all that paperwork he hated so much. He had done so well.

“Crowley, what on Earth was that all about? Do you have any idea the trouble you’ve caused?”

“I—trouble? A thank you would be nice, Angel. I rescued you!”

“You-- _kidnapped_ me…right in front of a bunch of knights. And you taunted them and cackled evilly while doing it. You do realize that this sort of thing, this sort of scenario which you have drawn us into, is their entire raison d’etra. That they all live for this sort of thing? They are definitely going to come after us!”

“So what? Let them look as much as they want. They’ll never actually find us if I don’t want them to.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“They’ll have to give up eventually and then they’ll remember you as—as the one that got away I guess. No harm to your reputation.”

“Give up? They’ll never give up. And they’ll waste so much precious time looking. Why couldn’t you have just done as I asked and –”

“Sssssstop saying that,” Crowley cut him off. “I’m not going to do that! Why can’t you get that through your head?”

“Because I don’t understand…,” Aziraphale trailed off, a bit taken aback by the vehemence of Crowley’s reply.

“I would never, under any circumstance, _ever_ hurt you, Angel. I can’t, alright? There’s the big secret. That’s the reason that I don’t want you and I to work against each other anymore, because if it came to an actual fight --at this point—I wouldn’t be able to. Hurting you is just not on the table for me anymore.” It was such a stupid thing to admit. That Aziraphale pretty much had free reign to carry on whatever Heavenly projects he liked and his only opposition was too squeamish to stop him.

“Oh, Crowley… I—I don’t exactly relish the idea of fighting you either, dear boy,” Aziraphale flushed. He had been deeply hurt by Crowley’s suggestion that all his hard work was pointless; that they were only ‘canceling each other out’. It hadn’t occurred to him that the suggestion was motivated by anything beyond sloth.

They both had to look away from each other, the sudden honesty of the moment too much for either of them. Fortunately, the two of them had stumbled into a Chivalric Romance and that meant that there was always a plentiful supply of bandits waiting near by to provide breaks whenever the narrative called for them. A small band of them emerged from the woods just then and made the expected remarks about having Crowley and Aziraphale outnumbered.

Crowley, smiled, grateful enough for the distraction that he didn’t think he’d do anything very awful to any of them, but drew his sword just for the look of the thing. He glanced at Aziraphale and noticed he was unarmed.

“Heh, you haven’t given your sword away again, have you Angel?”

“I—well, I didn’t think I’d be needing it anymore, did I? And Bedivere’s was rather old and chipped so I told him he could take mine…I suppose I would have had to borrow it back for our fight though, which would have been a touch awkward.”

Crowley didn’t say anything beyond a small, garbled sound of surprise. Instead he simply stepped in front of Aziraphale and raised his sword, as if the angel was in any real danger even without a weapon. Aziraphale’s heart fluttered and his knees went weak so suddenly that he almost stumbled forward. _What on Earth?_

The bandits ran at them but only got a few paces before Crowley caused them to see a sight that made the idea of toiling the rest of their lives away in humble peasantry suddenly seem wonderfully appealing. To a man, they fled back into the forest.

“Sorry Angel,” Crowley looked back at him and grinned. “I know you’re perfectly capable of defending yourself and all that. I was just having a bit of fun.”

“Absolutely. Perfectly capable…of….,” Aziraphale cleared his throat. He knew he was blushing furiously, and his stomach had apparently contracted the dancing plague. “Of course…since you already recognize that I don’t require assistance, I…I don’t suppose that there’s any _harm_ in you…having a bit of fun. If that’s something that _you_ enjoy.”

“Right, um,” Crowley cleared _his_ throat. “So, you’ll be needing to start a new life somewhere else then. Where had you been planning to go?”

“Oh! I hadn’t really thought that far but maybe …Constantinople?” He didn’t know why he said that. It was just the first place that popped into his head.

“Yeah, Constantinople is supposed to be nice…” There were probably a lot of bandits between here and Constantinople though. In fact, Crowley had heard of a large group not far from where they stood. “We could go with. Apollonius and I. Probably a lot to do there too. Fomenting evil and what not.” _Fomenting something, anyway_ Crowley thought and mentally kicked himself.

“Alright,” Aziraphale agreed. He still worried that they hadn’t seen the last of King Arthur and his Knights, but there was nothing for it now but to get out of England as quickly as possible and hope for the best.


	3. I Am Forever Searching High and Low

Crowley and Aziraphale’s progress through the forest was slow. The number of bandits, roughians, and sundry churls they ran afoul of seemed remarkably high for a random stretch of forest. Either population density in the countryside around Camelot had really exploded in recent years, or else some supernatural force was, perhaps unconsciously, drawing every ill-intentioned person in the vicinity straight to the fleeing pair, only for them all to be sent packing by a show of prowess from The Black Knight.

“And don’t come back!” The Black Knight called after his most recently vanquished foes. He yawned and stretched before turning back to Aziraphale, who was seated astride Apollonius. Since the horse still wanted nothing to do with Crowley, they had decided that it made sense for Aziraphale to ride him while Crowley walked beside them. Well, more paced around him really, while scanning the trees for new threats. “How are you doing up there? I should have seen if any of those guys had a spare saddle blanket or something.”

“N-no, I’m fine,” Aziraphale stammered. Aziraphale was learning things about himself today. And he was having a bit of a crisis of conscience about it.

As an angel, he was supposed to come to the aid of humans. He was not supposed to require help himself. _You’re not supposed to be so soft and weak._ _You were made to be a warrior and it’s high time you start acting like one. You’re supposed to be strong, self-reliant, able to deal with anything the world throws at you without blinking. Ugh. Without tearing up, certainly._ That was what he’d been told when he was given this assignment, anyway. And he had done well so far! He had really thrown himself into the role of Sir Aziraphale and done an excellent job of it, even if his contributions had run more towards designing Camelot’s infrastructure than to actually participating in battles.

Yet here he was, enjoying watching Crowley defend him. Why did he enjoy it so much? Being treated as if he needed to be protected? No. Being treated as if he deserved to be protected. It was wrong. He was wrong. But it felt incredible.

“Well, I think we should be coming up on a village pretty soon. You can take a rest there,” Crowley reached over and gave Aziraphale’s foot an affectionate squeeze and the angel nearly melted right out of the saddle. “We can get a bite to eat too.”

“Yes, I am quite famished, now that you mention it!”

Crowley turned at the sound of rustling leaves, no doubt heralding yet more roughians. But the demon emitted a snarl from deep in his throat and snapped his fingers and Aziraphale looked down, startled to find his wrists bound together and his feet lashed to the stirrups.

“Crowley?”

“Hold, villain!” Sir Percival appeared, followed by the rest of King Arthur’s knights. Ah, Crowley was taking pains to protect Aziraphale’s good name as well, because he had made it clear that that was important to him. The thought made Aziraphale shiver. Still, he couldn’t have his friends hurt for the sake of the ruse.

“Crowley, please don’t hurt him!” Aziraphale yelled after the demon, who was already stalking towards Percival, one hand drawing his sword and the other raised and ready to perform any number of horrible curses.

Percival caught sight of Aziraphale and his entire attitude changed at once, as if a beam of light had burst through the clouds and illuminated him. “Do not be afraid for me, my love! I am invincible so long as I wear your token,” He held up one end of the wool scarf wrapped around his neck. “I will defeat this knave and free you at once!”

Crowley growled. “You’re going to defeat me, huh?”

“I shall, for the honor of my true love!”

The other knights all hung back; this was clearly a matter of personal honor, best settled man to man. Some of them placed themselves near their king, ready to stand with him if the fight happened to shift suddenly in his direction. Others clustered tight around Merlin, who frowned and stood on his toes in an attempt to see over them. Although they knew (on what we will, for lack of a better word, call ‘an intellectual’ level) that their wizard was the best wizard in the world, he still _looked_ awfully fragile and everything in them rebelled at the idea of leaving him exposed during a fight.

“You called me unworthy,” Percival said as he and Crowley began to circle one another. “You will learn how wrong you were.”

“ _Snort_. I doubt that very much.”

“I will show you what it means to be Aziraphale’s champion. I am worthy because I put his happiness before my own, because I would lay down my life for his, and because I love him and have earned his love in return. While you,” Percival easily blocked a wild swing of Crowley’s sword. “You, are an evil creature who does not know love and will never be loved. It is you who is unworthy.”

“You idiot,” Crowley yelled and swung at him again. “You can’t even _comprehend_ what Aziraphale means to me! You can’t even begin to understand what he _is_!”

“He is my angel,” Percival replied calmly and sent Crowley’s sword flying out of his hand with one elegant swing. “He will never be yours . In your heart, you know this to be true.”

Crowley stood there, panting and stunned. He raised his other hand and snapped his fingers. There was a spark of fire but whatever it was meant to do or to become, it simply fizzled out.

Aziraphale blinked, dumbfounded for a second, but then realized what had happened. He glanced at Merlin and sure enough, the boy had wriggled free of his bodyguards and was holding a hand towards Crowley with an intense look of concentration. He wasn’t about to let Crowley cheat by employing any magic against his friend.

Fortunately, he wasn’t looking for any interference from Aziraphale. The angel twisted the ropes that restrained his hands out of force of habit. No matter, he was still far from powerless; using his hands only helped him be more economical about his energy use. All at once, the wind picked up and a violent storm touched down. The wind howled and trees whipped from side to side. Sheets of rain fell from the sky and branches with them.

Percival threw an arm in front of his face and tried to blink the rain from his eyes. When he lowered his arm, his opponent was yards away, as if yanked from under his nose by an unseen force. Apollonius reared up and the took off running and somehow The Black Knight kept pace with the horse as if he were tethered to it just as tightly as his captive. 

The knights who had taken responsibility for Merlin’s safety were all trying to bend themselves over him to shield his body from falling debris with their own. This had forced him to kneel on the ground with his hands over his head to protect it from knocking against their armor. He tried to peek out at the storm from between their legs. It was clearly the work of a powerful sorcerer, but who? Where was the Black Knight’s accomplice hiding?

There was a loud crack above them as a branch snapped from a tree and Merlin sent it flying off in a random direction, although it would have miraculously missed them even without his intervention. They stayed huddled together for several long minutes more, all visibility lost in the storm, before it finally began to abate. By then, all sign of Aziraphale and the Black Knight was gone; even their tracks were washed clean.

Gawain helped Merlin to his feet while scanning him up and down for injuries. “Alright there?”

“What the devil was that about?” Arthur demanded, wringing water out of his cloak. “Merlin, that wasn’t you for whatever reason…?”

“Not me. Or the Black Knight either, though I think he can use magic as well. I think I stopped him from doing something during the fight.”

“You might have stopped that storm too, witch boy,” Agravaine grumbled but Gawain gave him such a look that he said no more.

“Not without knowing who was causing it,” Merlin frowned. He was troubled by the revelation of just how much magical power The Black Knight seemed to have at his disposal, because as mighty as Arthur and his men were with sword or lance, their roles were reversed when the fight included magic; then they all had only Merlin to rely on and he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to protect them all.

\----

Aziraphale leaned forward in the saddle as he would if he were trying to spur his horse to go faster, although Apollonius had already stopped running, recognizing that there wasn’t any point if his hooves weren’t even coming into contact with the ground anymore. Aziraphale was simply using a miracle to propel the horse and himself on it forward, while Crowley floated alongside. Aziraphale did not look back at Crowley. He couldn’t bring himself to look at him. He only wanted to put as much distance between Crowley and Percival as he possibly could. He wanted to put them on opposite polls of the Earth. He wanted to put one of them on the moon so that there was no chance of their ever meeting again.

“Angel, where are we going?” Crowley called.

“I don’t know!”

“Can you stop? Please? Or let me drive for a bit? I know a place we can go.”

Aziraphale allowed them to come to a stop and placed the horse and Crowley carefully back on the ground. He realized that he was panting and shaking and still soaked to his skin from the rain. He moved to wipe a hand against his face, found his hands still tied together, and actually had to struggle to muster the energy to miracle them free. Perhaps he had overexerted himself a touch.

He felt them lift off the ground again, just a couple centimeters this time, and they were pulled at a more steady and sedate pace until the woods opened up to reveal a lake and on an island in the center of the lake, a small castle in terrible disrepair. They floated across the surface of the water and were set down in the courtyard of the castle. Aziraphale shivered. He didn’t like this place; it felt spooky.

“They won’t find us here,” Crowley sounded confident, but he had been confident before too.

Aziraphale tried to lift his foot from the stirrup and found it still tied in place as well. He gave a frustrated squeak and tried to pull it free anyway. Crowley came over and waved the rope out of existence before extending a hand to help Aziraphale down. Aziraphale accepted and slid down, into Crowley’s arms.

“Alright Angel? Let’s get you some tea,” but neither of them moved. They only stood there with their arms around each other, staring into each other’s faces.

“Crowley, I’m so sorry. That was all my fault. Those terrible things you had to hear.”

“Let’s just forget about the whole thing, okay? It didn’t mean anything. Just a lot of empty words.” Crowley was blushing furiously but was powerless to turn his face away.

Aziraphale felt a tightness in his chest and his breath caught in his throat. “I mean something to you? You said that I’m important to you…”

“No no no, not like that,” Crowley rushed to explain. “Just, a familiar face across the millennia—a human wouldn’t really understand what that’s like. That’s-that’s all I meant.”

“Crowley, you mean so much to me too. I think that I must love you.” When the demon and the knight had been trading words during their fight, hearing Percival declare his love had only caused Aziraphale to feel guilty and embarrassed. But when Crowley spoke, his heart leapt with joy. Even the look of pain he saw on Crowley’s face when Percival told him that Aziraphale could never love him, God forgive him, even that made Aziraphale happy because he thought he knew how to heal that pain.

“Don’t, Angel,” Crowley moaned and brought a hand up to Aziraphale’s shoulder, but whether it was prepared to push him away or pull him closer, no one could say. “Don’t say things you don’t mean. Please, I can’t take it.”

“I do mean it. I love you. Don’t you feel the same, or am I mistaken?”

Crowley only shook his head in reply, eyes shut tight. “I do but if you don’t want me that’s okay. I swear it is. You don’t have to pretend. You’ll just regret it later.”

“Oh Crowley,” Aziraphale stood on his toes to kiss Crowley’s cheek. “I’ve hurt you. I didn’t know.”

Crowley pressed his face into Aziraphale’s shoulder and sobbed. “Just tell me to stop and I will. We can go back to being friends --or enemies-- or whatever you want whenever you want. I’ll never talk about it again if it makes you uncomfortable. Just promise you won’t run away from me. Just tell me. You can tell me.”

“I promise,” Aziraphale pulled Crowley into him, not caring how the demon’s armor pressed into his soft flesh, clad only in wet linen. “I can promise you that whatever happens, I will be honest with you. I will not say things I think you want to hear just to spare your feelings and will never run away from you. If my feelings change, I will be brave and I will tell you. But right now, I am sure that I love you.”

Crowley looked into the angel’s eyes to assure himself that the words were genuine, and he sniffled and gave another small hiccuping sob. Before taking several deep breaths to calm himself. He recognized how unsuited their outfits were for the night that was falling upon them fast and snapped his fingers, replacing their sodden clothes and ungainly armor with cloaks of heavy fur. A roaring fire sprang to life in a hearth, illuminating a bench piled high with more furs, which had not been there a moment before. Crowley looked at it and decided it wasn’t good enough for them; with another snap of his fingers, candles dispelled the gloom in a wide circle all around them and a low table appeared, set with food and a steaming pot of tea.

Not so spooky after all, Aziraphale decided. Not with Crowley here, putting his arm around him and leading him to the fire. Not with Crowley pulling him down into the pile of furs and promising not to ever leave his side.


	4. The Calm Before the Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long break between updates! Only one or two chapters more after this.

Aziraphale awoke the next morning in Crowley’s arms, in their massive pile of furs, almost too happy for words. When he had fallen into bed with his demon the night before, he had assumed that the guilt he would feel in the morning would be terrible but had lacked the will to deny himself what he wanted. Now though, he found that his heart was too full to leave any room for guilt. Being with Crowley was right, and he felt more certain about it than he would have thought possible. They had kissed each other’s tears away and now he felt clean and forgiven.

That didn’t mean they were free from the trouble he’d gotten them into though. He remembered that fact and forced himself to stretch and sit up. Crowley wrapped his long arms around the angel and pulled him back down to spoon him from behind.

“No get up,” he slurred. “Stay.”

“We should get moving now dear boy.”

“Soooooofffffft,” Crowley moaned, pulling Aziraphale tighter against his chest and squeezing him like the snake he was. “How are you so blessed soft!?”

“Darling, we need to get a wiggle on before they catch up with us again.”

“The only wiggling I plan on doing…”

“Crowley!”

“They won’t find us here. We can stay for a while. It was only a fluke that they found us yesterday.”

“It wasn’t a fluke, it was Merlin.”

“King Arthur’s pet magician,” Crowley yawned into Aziraphale’s shoulder. “I’ve heard things. Wildly over exaggerated I’m sure. S’publicity stunt.”

“Oh no, my dear, I’m sure that whatever you’ve heard was just the tip of the iceberg. Merlin will be the greatest wizard of this age, if he isn’t already. The most impressive mortal sorcerer I’ve ever seen. That is, if he is entirely mortal.”

“You think he’s…”

“A Cambrian, at least according to the rumors. The offspring of a mortal woman and an incubus. I don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but it would help to explain the magnitude of his powers. There are even—well, I’m sure this _is_ just wild gossip, but there are even some who say that he is a sort of …failed attempt at creating the antichrist.”

“What?” Crowley couldn’t help but laugh. He thought he probably would have heard something about it If there were attempts being made to create the antichrist already. That wasn’t the kind of thing Hell would just spring on a demon, surely.

“But they say that something went wrong. A priest baptized him and freed him from his Hellish destiny as soon as he was born, or something along those lines.”

“Yeah, that’s…not how that works. That is definitely church propaganda.”

“Well, as I say, it’s just a rumor. My point is that he’s more than capable of leading the others straight to us again.”

***

Aziraphale was more right than he knew, for at that moment, Arthur and his knights had arrived at the shore of the lake and were trying to figure out where they could requisition some row boats.

“That settlement we passed not two miles ago,” said Bedivere. “It was on a lake and some of them must be fishermen. I’m sure I saw a net hung out to dry as we passed.”

“Good man,” Arthur clapped Sir Bedivere on the shoulder. “take the others there and offer the villagers as much coin as they require to compensate them for some boats. Remember that it is their livelihood and be generous. We will need at least four, I should think.”

Arthur stopped Percival from joining them. “Wait friend, in the battle to come, I would be honored if you would wield this.” So saying, he drew the sword Excalibur from its sheath and held the hilt towards Percival.

“My liege! I can not! That is…”

“We are facing a foe with magic beyond what we have seen and Excalibur is a sword with mystical properties. If you insist on facing him one on one, then I can at least give you this holy weapon. Let us prey over it while we wait and see if we can not imbue it with our righteousness.”

The two men bowed their heads and prepared to do so when Merlin interrupted them. “Arthur, can I talk to you for just a moment.”

Arthur nodded and jogged the handful of steps to Merlin.

“I’ve been thinking. We still don’t know nearly enough about our enemy; what he can do or even how many people are in the castle. I’d like to try astral projecting so that I can look around and tell you what to expect.”

“Is that dangerous Merlin?” Arthur asked.

“No,” Merlin lied. “Not at all. I’ll just be sending my consciousness in there. No matter what I find, nothing in there will be able to hurt me because my body will be back here with you. I just need you to keep an eye on it for me. Make sure I don’t get eaten by wild boars or that Sir Agravaine doesn’t draw anything rude on my face.” Truthfully, astral projection was not without its dangers, at least according to the somewhat confusing accounts Merlin had been reading recently. But it was still better than putting them all at risk by allowing them to storm the castle with no idea what was inside.

“Alright Merlin. You have until the others get back with the boats to look around, and I will personally make sure you don’t get eaten by boars. I make no promises about drawing on your face though.”

“Thanks,” Merlin rolled his eyes but lay down on the ground with his hands clasped together on his stomach and made himself comfortable.

“Is it working?” Arthur asked him.

“Shhh!” Merlin shooed him away. Arthur turned away somewhat reluctantly and went back to trying to think holy thoughts with Percival. The two men’s softly murmured prayers made a soothing sort of background noise and after a few minutes, Merlin thought he did detect the sort of floating sensation mentioned in his reading. But then the gentle sound of Arthur and Percival’s voices was replaced by someone giggling, which seemed inappropriate for the situation. Merlin tried to tune it out but it only grew louder and then a familiar voice shrieked. “Crowley, stop it! We have to get dressed!”

Merlin’s eyes snapped open and then immediately snapped closed again. “Oh my dear god!”

“Eeek!!”

“Well, speak of the devil,” Crowley drawled. “You must be Merlin.”

The young wizard dared to open one eye and found the kidnapped Sir Aziraphale, now clutching a fur cloak tightly around his body, blushing as red as sunset, in bed with The Black Knight.

“Merlin! It’s not what it appears…it—well, it’s far more complicated than it appears, at least.”

“Oh, we haven’t tried anything particularly complicated yet Angel. We’ve only covered the basics so far. Anyway, let’s just show him…”

“Oh my god,” Merlin covered his eyes with his hands as The Black Knight started trying to peel Sir Aziraphale’s blanket off of his shoulder. “The others are going to be in here in a moment and- and – and poor Percival is going to be absolutely heart broken…”

Merlin noticed his hands. He had hands, even in this state. They were visible to him and to others, it would seem, but they were mostly transparent and strangely lacking in detail. His face and form were recognizable though? How interesting. Was his ‘body’ just a projection of his consciousness and, if so, could he control the way he manifested with practice? Could he make himself look like someone else or even remain invisible? He wanted to play around with this new ability. Push the bounds a bit to see how far he could take it.

“Oh, stop it, you beast!” Aziraphale said to the other man.

“Oh, you stop. Look, kid, it’s much too long a story to sit here and explain, especially if your friends are getting ready to bust the door down,” The Black Knight was speaking to Merlin, and the Wizard broke his reverie just in time to look up and see huge feathery wings erupt from his back. “You’re just going to have to take our word for it that there is more going on here than you understand.”

Sir Aziraphale sighed and then wings burst from his back as well. “Yes, I’m afraid I’ve made a dog’s breakfast of the whole thing but for reasons which I can not explain, it is imperative that my friend and I be allowed to leave Camelot. Perhaps you can help us? Come up with some explanation the others will accept?”

Merlin didn’t respond right away because he was busy examining Aziraphale’s wings from various angles. He attempted to touch one but found to his annoyance that his hand passed right through it. He concentrated as hard as he could, but couldn’t so much as ruffle a single feather. Finally he registered that something had been asked of him.

“King Arthur and his knights don’t really know how to give up once they have a goal in mind.”

“Well, you could stop leading them to us, couldn’t you?” Crowley asked. “Say the trail had gone cold?”

“Maybe,” Merlin’s eyes looked a bit unfocused as he pondered that. “No, no that’s no good. Percival can sense Aziraphale’s holy aura, even if he doesn’t know that that’s what he’s doing.”

“Oh, um, can he? Yes, I suppose I knew he had a certain knack, but I didn’t think…”

“So even if you leave the country, he’s just going to keep following you East and… you do realize you’ll end up touching off The Crusades five or six centuries too soon, don’t you?”

“Er, what do you mean, Merlin? What are the crusades?” Aziraphale asked. 

“I…I’m not sure…something really bad, I think?” Merlin paused. “Oh, I… I think I can see through time…I think I might be seeing through time right now.”

He sounded a little frightened. If he had been a bit wiser he would have been very frightened. His audience was quickly getting there. Merlin’s eyes had start to look very strange, milky but swirling with strange light, like opals. And he seemed to be fading in and out a bit.

“Merlin? Are you still there?” Aziraphale asked.

“Y-yeah, I think so….but I might also be…everywhere?”

“Er, so just tell them not to follow us,” Crowley said. “Tell them we died or something.”

“Yes, my _original_ plan had been to sort of fake my own death,” Aziraphale added.

“Oh, that might work,” Merlin said vaguely. “I could probably make a potion that would only give the appearance of death…or…is that just something from a play?”

“Merlin, dear boy, are you quite alright? Is there anything at all I can do to help you?”

“No, I’m fine,” Merlin said, fading slowly from existence. “This is fine….”

“I feel like he’s not,” Crowley observed.

***

Back on the shore of the lake, the knights who had gone for row boats returned victorious but were dismayed to find their King sitting on the ground, holding their wizard, who was shaking violently.

“There’s something wrong with him!” Arthur’s head snapped up. “Get over there, now! They’re doing something to him!”

The knights obeyed at once, scrambling into the four rowboats they had brought. Gawain thought to offer his king a place in the last boat, which contained only himself, Gareth, and Percival, but Arthur shook his head and gripped Merlin tighter.

“Percival, I am counting on. You have Excalibur. You must destroy that fiend at any cost.”


	5. The End

Imagine you’re standing on a high peak. From this vantage point, you can look out and see the landscape rolling away in all directions. There are houses, hills, forests, rivers, maybe some nice little cows, and in the distance towns and cities, growing smaller as they stretched into a hazy blue at the horizon. This is, metaphorically, what Merlin experienced. Only instead of landscape spread out at his feet, he realized he was seeing the future. Not just the future, but a vista of all _possible_ futures, each tree or cow was really a “maybe” or a “what-if”.

Unfortunately, Merlin made _the_ rookie mistake of people who discover a sudden gift for divination. Instead of looking down at his own feet and noticing the path he was already on, following it step by step to see where it led, seeing the places it went, in an order which made sense, finding out what caused what and where the path branched, where he could make small decisions that mattered, he cast his gaze to the furthest edge of the horizon, full of curiosity to know how far his vision reached.

But Merlin wasn’t really standing on a peak looking out at the scenery. His consciousness was floating free of his body in a plane where physical limitations didn’t apply. So, when he focused his attention on a point in the distance, his feet didn’t stay planted on the earth because there were no feet and there was no earth. Instead, his mind was flung forward in time at the speed of thought.

***

Back in the present, Merlin’s body was reacting poorly to the sudden absence of its animating spirit. Arthur cursed himself. He ought to have asked more questions. Now he had to stay behind on the shore while his men faced danger without him because he didn’t know if moving Merlin in this condition might hurt him. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to find his way back to his body if it wasn’t where he left it but leaving him unattended was out of the question as well. Merlin’s eyelids fluttered slightly, but only because of the shaking that wracked his entire body. They lifted just enough for Arthur to see that the wizard’s eyes were glowing. That was troubling, though not so troubling as when Merlin’s body began to levitate off the ground, lifted by an intangible wind that whipped at the wizard’s hair but didn’t produce a sound or stir a single blade of grass. Arthur held tight, pressing Merlin to his chest and stubbornly refused to let whatever force was at work move him an inch. He couldn’t do anything but hold on and wait for his knights to reach the castle.

They were on the verge of doing so. The last boat to leave the shore was also the lightest with only three knights and it had pulled ahead of the rest, Gawain and Gareth pulling the ores in perfect unison to the chant of “Perce, Perce, Perce, Perce!” Percival stood at the front of the little boat, dead silent and focused on the castle as if he could pull it closer with the force of his glare, looking for all the world as if he intended to leap ashore as soon as the boat was within a few yards of it.

That was the sight that Crowley found when he happened to glance out a window.

“Shit! Angel? We need to hurry this up!”

“Yes, I’m trying to do just that,” Aziraphale’s voice called back from down a long corridor and up a winding staircase. The angel caught a flicker out of the corner of his eye and spun around but it was already gone again. He was trying to follow Merlin’s incorporeal form but it kept blinking in and out of existence. It was rather like chasing a firefly in the dark; he kept rushing to the last location he had seen a flicker of the boy but only arrived in time to find him gone. Not that he knew what he could do if he caught up with him. It wasn’t as if he could pop the wizard’s spirit in a jar and carry it home to his body.

“Merlin?” He called out, not for the first time. “Merlin, can you hear me? Is there anything I can do to help?” But there was no answer. Aziraphale was, of course, an ethereal being, and he could, technically, disengage his true self from his corporeal form too, but it would take some preparation to do so and he feared he’d lose the boy entirely if he paused to try. His only hope was that perhaps merlin might be able to follow his voice back from wherever he had gone.

There was a jarring crash from downstairs as the ancient wooden board that barred the door splintered before Sir Percival.

“Shit,” Crowley cursed. They were out of time already and Crowley made a snap decision. He transformed instantaneously, only a puff of displaced air testifying to the sudden change.

If there ever comes a time in your life when you are tempted to turn into a giant serpent, please do your best to resist the urge. I know that it always _seems_ like a good idea at the time, but it rarely works out the way one hopes. It certainly wouldn’t for Crowley, not against a hero wielding a holy blade.

***

Most of what Merlin saw was utterly incomprehensible to him but every time he thought to himself “what is this?” or “how did this happen?” he would be yanked by the thought to another point in history which might have helped to explain the last, if he had the context to know what that new vision was or if he had been able to process any of it quickly enough. It was basically a Wikiwalk, but one of inhuman speed and incomprehensible terror.

He bounced around like a pinball not only in his own timeline but through every possible future, including a bunch of steampunky ones, the really bad one where the Nazis won WWII, and a few ones where people somehow invented the internet way too soon and things got weird.

He only stopped when he struck some kind of barrier and bounced off it. It was the end of the world and therefor the end of time itself. (Even if time did recommence immediately on the other side of it. It was, technically the end of the world that Merlin inhabited.) He staggered backwards a few paces and fell to the ground a little ways before the end. He was on his back, laying in the woods, gasping for breath. The dirt and leaves felt so wonderfully solid beneath him that he had to dig his fingers into them and utter a sound that was half laugh and half sob.

Four children ran past him, unable to detect his presence, and though the woods looked ancient and eternal, he could tell that the children were of another time from his own. Their dress and way of speaking was strange but the game they were playing was familiar. They were hitting each other with sticks and pretending they were swords. Playing at being knights, he realized, and as Merlin watched them, he was struck with an odd sense of kinship with the blond boy who seemed to be their leader. His lips quirked into a wry smile when the boy declared that only he got to be King Arthur, because he had thought of it, but that the ones called Brian and Wensleydale could decide between themselves who got to be Merlin, which was _almost_ as good.

“Well then, I’m going to be a dragon,” the girl declared.

Merlin let his head fall back on the ground. _That’s right_ , he thought. _Arthur. If I can just focus on finding my way back to Arthur. That’s where I belong._ Merlin realized that if children were still acting out their story at the end of the world, then it ment their story had survived to the end of the world. Perhaps if he kept a tight hold of their story this time and only looked at it and only thought of it and didn’t let himself get distracted, he could follow it back to its source.

***

Aziraphale heard the sound of enormous scales sliding against the enormous stones of the castle as Crowley, in the form of an enormous snake, rushed to face the invading knights. Aziraphale had not seen so much as a flicker of Merlin for several long moments and feared that any chance he might have had of helping the boy was gone. He might be lost beyond hope of help, for all that Aziraphale knew, and they had squandered the warning that Merlin brought them at such a price.

Aziraphale ran to a gallery which overlooked the large open court far below. There he was able to look down on the scene below and saw that Percival and was surprised but not that surprised to find himself facing a hellish snake beast, hissing and dripping venom from its scimitar sized fangs. This was fairly familiar territory for the knight and, far from scaring him off as Crowley had perhaps hoped, he seemed excited by the challenge. Two other knights stood on the sidelines and cheered their friend on, and another five entered the space, having just arrived in their own boat.

“Oh Dear,” Aziraphale dithered. His fear was for Percival and the other knights, who Crowley might easily injure even without meaning to, in such a form and such an enclosed space. Then Percival’s blade struck true and opened a great slash across Crowley’s side. The snake screamed in pain and surprise and fell against the inner wall of the courtyard hard enough to shake the entire castle. A section of the gallery Aziraphale occupied crumbled away and the angel took some steps back to avoid the breach.

He looked back down and saw Percival advancing on his enemy, who remained slumped against the wall, his wound bleeding freely. Why was he pretending to be injured? Was this some ploy? Then Aziraphale saw what sword Percival held and felt the holy energy emanating from it in waves.

That changed the situation entirely. Crowley was not a great beast who was in danger of accidently crushing several fragile little humans. He was a wounded animal, hemmed in on all sides by walls of solid stone, with an enemy who would delight in taking him apart piece by piece.

The snake reared up with a defiant hiss. Percival swung his blade and Crowley half dodged, half fell out of its way, slamming into the wall again. His size was only proving to be a hindrance in the tight quarters. His range of movement was severely limited. He was boxed in on all sides and still more knights were pouring in to make retreat impossible. Another dodge and another impact caused the gallery to crumble further. Aziraphale took a step back from the precipice that had opened up next to him but then he stopped.

This fight needed to end immediately. In another second it could be too late. He could loose Crowley. Another impact jarred more of the stones at his feet loose and instead of edging away, Aziraphale stepped forward. He uttered one long, loud shriek, to be sure they paused and saw what was happening and only then did he let himself tumble forward, head over feet and fall to his death.

***

Merlin opened his eyes and saw Arthur watching him. “Arthur,” he breathed a sign of relief and attempted to sit up but found himself very firmly pinned in place.

“Merlin? Is—are you alright?”

“Arthur,” Merlin found speaking difficult and had to take in several huge lungsful of air before he could continue. “Arthur, I came back. I knew if I could find you I could find my way back…”

“What happened to you? You’re not ever doing that again.”

“I saw—” Merlin realized something suddenly and tried to sit up again but was still held too tightly to move. “Arthur! I need paper! Pen and paper! Quickly!”

Arthur finally released the wizard. “Did you get an idea for a book or something?”

“I saw it Arthur! I saw a way that it could happen where you don’t have to die! No one has to die!”

“What are you talking about?”

Merlin succeeded at last in finding some paper in his pack and began to write furiously, scrawling down as much as he could remember about the strange things he’d seen.

“I saw—well, on the way forward I saw a lot of things that didn’t make any sense, but on the way back I just followed your story and the story always—usually—ended… badly…too soon…. So when I got there, I looked all around and I found a way!”

“Merlin, I have no idea what that means? What story?”

Merlin didn’t answer but went on scribbling madly until at last he was satisfied that he’d gotten everything of importance down. Then he collapsed, satisfied, onto the ground, his head in Arthur’s lap.”

“Merlin, what do you think that you’re doing!”

“Gonna take a little nap now…”

Arthur was trying to formulate a reply to that when he saw something that stopped him dead. A heavy mist had begun to rise from the lake, while he was too distracted by other matters to notice, and now a form was coming towards them through the mists, attended by the sounds of great sorrow and lamentations. It was one of the boats. Some knights sat rowing in the front while Percival towered over them from his seat in the back of the boat, wailing and cradling a broken body to his chest.

“Oh no,” Arthur murmured, his heart going out to his friend. It had all been for nothing, in the end. Sir Aziraphale was dead.

Still, Arthur gave a silent prayer of thanks as each of the other boats broke through the mist and he was able to count his men and see that no one else had been lost in the attempt.

“Tell me what happened,” he said to Gawain. But before he could receive an answer, one more boat became visible, floating very slowly towards them.

There appeared to be only one figure in it, standing in the middle. There were no oars, yet it moved steadily towards them. Arthur reached for Excalibur before remembering that he didn’t have it. “Who goes there?” He called out and placed a protective arm over Merlin.

There was no reply, but the figure soon became visible. It was a regally tall woman with flowing red curls and bright golden eyes. She was no mere mortal woman. He could tell that much at a glance.

She fixed Arthur with her inhuman stare and said, “Give me Sir Aziraphale, that I may bring him to the blessed isle and heal him.”

Arthur found himself nodding in agreement before he even realized what she said. There was something hypnotic in her voice. Still, he shook Merlin’s shoulder lightly and murmured, “should we do as she says?”

Merlin didn’t have the strength to lift his head very high. He only caught a brief glimpse of the strange woman before letting it drop again. Then he lifted one hand an made a gesture, his thumb and pinky extended and the rest of his fingers curled into his palm, and shook it ever so slightly.

“What?”

“Yeasfine,” Merlin reassured.

Some of the knights moved Sir Aziraphale’s body to the strange woman’s boat and Percival allowed them to, standing motionless as if in some kind of daze. He stayed that way until the boat disappeared back into the mist and then, all at once, he leapt up and ran into the woods, howling with grief.

****

A long while later, after King Arthur and his men began realized that there would be no finding Percival, that he needed time to grieve and would return to them in his own time, after they began their long sad trip back to Camelot, the mysterious woman was still in the boat, crouched over the body of Sir Aziraphale. The damage from the fall was all gone and even his clothes were pristine again.

“Come on Angel,” Crowley’s voice was soft. He had been talking to the body for a while. “You can come back now. You can use this body again. You don’t need to go back to Heaven. Fill out all that nasty paperwork…” How long would they keep him there?

There was a sudden intake of air from the body. “Oh! Oh, Crowley, dearest,” Aziraphale sat up. “Thank you, my dear. I always have been so terribly fond of this corporation.”

“Makes two of us Angel,” Crowley gathered him into a hug. “Why did you do that? And why were you gone so bloody long?”

“Oh my dear, dear boy. I’m so sorry to have worried you. I had to do something for Percival though, you know. Try to make up for things a bit and at least leave him in good hands. I couldn’t leave him alone in that state.”

“You can’t leave _me_ alone in that state,” Crowley insisted, and Aziraphale wrapped his arms around the demon.

“And I shan’t, ever again.”

“Why did you have to do that?” Crowley asked again. “Awful, overdramatic…”

“I had to keep you safe. Being discorporated doesn’t matter but if you’d been destroyed by that sword it certainly would have.”

“It does matter, angel,” Crowley crushed Aziraphale against himself. “It matters if you’re hurt. It’s not just existing or not existing. It matters if we’re happy—”

“I know, my dear. I know,” Aziraphale leaned up and kissed Crowley. “I am so sorry for hurting you. At least now we don’t need to leave England if we don’t want to. But let’s leave this unpleasantness behind us. Where do you want to go, my love?”

“Anywhere. Anywhere,” Crowley shook his head. He didn’t care, so long as they were together from now on and he kissed Aziraphale for a very long time, as their boat drifted in a lazy circle.

***

It might have eased Aziraphale’s conscious to know that some good had come from the whole terrible mess, from Arthur and Merlin’s point of view as well. For them, Merlin’s reckless attempt at astral projection, and the insight he gained from it, meant that instead of dying too young at the battle of Camlan, Arthur would do so in bed at the age of Ninety-two, surrounded by grandchildren and great grandchildren.

This would not impact the legend nearly as much as you would think, because later generations would quickly conflate King Arthur’s deeds with those of his son, King Arthur II, Grandson King Arthur III, Great-Granddaughter Queen Arthur IV, etc. etc. But it would lead to the popular depiction of Merlin as the wizened advisor to a boy who would be king* as well as most of the glaring discrepancies to be found between different versions of the story.

And as for Percival, he would be alright, in time. For a while, he ranged through the woods like a beast, broken past reason. But he had been led through the wilderness by some divine guidance so that when he finally collapsed in exhaustion, it was near a little village, where a kindhearted shepherd found him and nursed him back to health in his own bed.

“Where am I?” Percival whispered when he regained consciousness again, blinking in the light. “Is this heaven?”

“This is only a secluded little village, much like any other. I found you unconscious in the woods and made a healing poultice,” said a man, whose angelic looks had prompted Percival’s question.

“Thank you. I should return to Camelot and leave you in peace now.”

“Camelot! Oh, you must stay until you’re recovered. But once you are, might I—might I go with you, sir knight? I have always secretly dreamed of being a traveling bard and seeing a bit of the world,” the man blushed as he admitted this and Percival thought he looked very pretty doing so.

“I don’t know…” Percival sighed and looked at the ceiling. “There was someone who I…was not able to protect. I fear my heart may be too wounded to make me a fit companion for anyone, much less a friendly and upbeat person such as yourself. Who ever heart of such a pairing of opposites?”

Just then there came the sound of yelling from outside. The shepherd rushed to the window and exclaimed, “Oh no, bandits are attacking the village! I-I’ll try to distract them while you go hide in the hay loft.”

Percival rose from bed and found his sword resting against the wall. He put his finger on the other man’s lips to stop his fretting and even gave him a wink. “Shhhhh, I’ve got this.”

________

*there would come a day, many years later, when Merlin happened to catch his reflection in a mirror while giving his great, great grand children a lesson in statecraft, when he would be heard to exclaim “Oh, _this_ is why they always draw me so old! ROFL!”


End file.
